The conference will look at symptoms from three perspectives:
The processes by which body sensations become symptoms and the way GPs respond to those and recognising which ones may be markers of serious disease.
The problem of persistent (or "medically unexplained") physical symptoms. This element of the theme will include clinical communication during consultations. It will include both research findings and a clinical masterclass for practitioners.
Safe effective reassurance - recent evidence on the different types of reassurance and how they are delivered in primary care
We have three internationally outstanding plenary speakers:
Willie Hamilton, CBE, MD, FRCP, FRCGP, is professor of primary care diagnostics at the University of Exeter.
The major part of his work is in cancer diagnostics in the symptomatic patient – the one sitting in the GP’s consulting room. He leads the DISCOVERY team, with staffing varying from 6-10, plus 8 PhD students, all supported by his grant awards. These grants total over £35m, including CRUK’s first Catalyst award.
Willie has over 250 publications, including the 2010 and 2015 overall Research Paper of the Year for studies on ovarian cancer and on the public appetite for cancer testing. He also was the cancer category winner in 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2017. His recent paper, on the risk of cancer with thrombocytosis, was the most downloaded and read paper in 2017 in the BJGP.
He was clinical lead on the NICE guidance on suspected cancer, NG12, published in 2015. This governs around £1bn of annual NHS spending. One of his textbooks, ‘Cancer Diagnosis in Primary Care’ won a rather minor BMA award. He gets 50p royalties a copy, so encourages everyone to buy it.
He was awarded a CBE in the 2019 New Years’ Honours List for services to improving early cancer diagnosis.
Monica Greco (BA, MA, PhD) is Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London and a Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung. For over twenty years, her research has engaged with the history, philosophy, and contemporary practices of psychosomatic medicine. Her empirical focus since 2009 has been on the problem of so-called ‘medically unexplained symptoms’ (or MUS).
Monica has published widely on topics that include
· constructs of health, illness, and explanation in psychosomatic medicine
· healthism and the ‘happiness agenda’
· conceptualisations of the ‘right to health’
· problems of medical classification and nomenclature
· vitalism in philosophy and in the history of the life sciences
· interdisciplinarity in medicine / medical humanities
Monica is currently preparing a monograph provisionally entitled: Participating Bodies: Medicine and the Problem of Subjectivity (for Routledge). A guest-edited special issue of the journal BMJ Medical Humanities on the topic of ‘Biopolitics and Psychosomatics’ appeared in June 2019.
Tamar Pincus Is a Professor in Health Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London, where she also holds the position of Associate Dean (research) in the Science Faculty. She has a PhD in psychology (University College London), and Masters Degrees in experimental research methods in psychology (UCL), and epidemiology (Cambridge University). She is a registered practicing practitioner with the Health and Care Professionals Council.
Tamar is the Director of the Research Centre for the study of Pain and Well-Being at Royal Holloway. The research has included investigation of cognitive biases in pain patients; the psychological predictors for poor outcome in low back pain, and the study of clinicians’ beliefs and behaviours and their effect on patients with pain, especially in reference to effective reassurance and return to work. Her practical work has focused on training practitioners in effective communication skills and fostering awareness of patients’ psychological needs and concerns.